This week on Maker Update, felted electronics, new 3D printers, wire bending, an angry woodpecker complaint button, a big head box, 3D printed tulle necklace, cordless sawzall, perfect painting, Tinkercad scribbling and Maker Faires. This week’s Cool Tool is a cordless reciprocating saw.

Show Notes

Project of the Week

3D Printed Glowing Flower // Becky Stern
http://www.instructables.com/id/Glowing-3D-Printed-Flowers/

News

Ultimaker S5 Announced
https://ultimaker.com/en/products/ultimaker-s5

Lulzbot Mini 2 Announced
https://www.lulzbot.com/learn/announcements/lulzbot-mini-2-desktop-3d-printer-revealed-rapidtct-2018

More Projects

Simple Wire Bender by Pete Prodoehl
http://rasterweb.net/raster/2018/05/02/simple-wire-bender/

Complaint button by Greg Zumwalt
https://www.instructables.com/id/Complaint-Button/

Big Head Box By Yuji Hayashi
https://makezine.com/projects/fat-head-cardboard-box/
http://portal.nifty.com/kiji/160830197309_1.htm

How to 3D Print on Tulle by Penolopy Bulnick
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-3D-Print-on-Tulle-Fabric/

Cool Tools Minute

DEWALT DCS367B 20V Max XR Brushless Compact Reciprocating Saw, (Tool Only)
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B01M69K91R/ctmakerupdate-20

DEWALT DW4856 Metal/Woodcutting Reciprocating Saw Blade Set, 6-Piece
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004RHAA/ctmakerupdate-20

DEWALT DCB102BP 20-volt MAX Jobsite Charging Station with Battery Pack
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00N1KPDFI/ctmakerupdate-20

Tools/Tips

3D Print Designs by Walter Hsiao
https://www.thingiverse.com/walter/about

Pier 9 team has released their complete workshop guide so you can learn how to use ANY TOOL
https://www.instructables.com/pier9/

Eric Strebel’s Spray Paint Finishing Techniques
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z-cBnH79J4

Scribble Feature now in Tinkercad
https://blog.tinkercad.com/2018/04/26/introducing-scribble-the-ultimate-tinkercad-personalization-tool/

LED Octopus
https://blog.tindie.com/2018/05/simplify-next-teensy-based-led-strip-project-led-octopus/

SELF FORMING STRUCTURES: AN EXPLORATION INTO 3D PRINTING ON PRE-STRETCHED FABRIC by Gabe Fields
https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=8011

This Friday: Arduino Tinkercad Circuits Talk With Becky Stern
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC03qquYrOU

Maker Faires

Lome Mini Maker Faire Lomé
Alentejo Mini Maker Faire Évora
Bitola Mini Maker Faire Bitola
Martha’s Vineyard Mini Maker Faire West Tisbury, Massachusetts
Madison Mini Maker Faire Madison, Wisconsin
North Little Rock Mini Maker Faire North Little Rock, Arkansas
Buffalo Mini Maker Faire Buffalo, New York
May 18 + 19 + 20, 2018 MAKER FAIRE BAY AREA

Transcript

This week on Maker Update, felted electronics, new 3D printers, wire bending, an angry woodpecker, a big head box, 3D printed tulle necklace, cordless Sawzall, perfect painting, Tinkercad scribbling and Maker Faires.

I’m Donald Bell and welcome to another Maker Update. Thanks for sticking with me as I work out this new schedule. Things are a little hairy over here, especially as I try to wrap up my new Power Racer car for Maker Faire Bay Area, which is just in a few weeks. The car is officially running, though, but there’s still a million little things to do.

But I have a lot to catch you all up on, so let’s get started with the project of the week.

Becky Stern has a guide up on making this 3D printed glowing LED flower. She’s been on a Tinkercad kick recently and this project is part of that, but also weaves in some basic electronics and felting!

Not only does Becky show you how she created this multi-part 3D flower design from scratch, with a built-in battery and LED holder, but she shows how to finish it off with this cute, yellow, felted dome using a needle and some backing foam.

It’s a fun project, and I like how the felt mixes things up a little bit and gives it a dash of craft.

It’s time for some news. Sorta old news by now, but two of the bigger names in 3D printers have announced new products.

Ultimaker now has a big 3D printer called the S5 priced at $6,000. And Lulzbot announced a new version of their Lulzbot Mini due out in June, likely priced at around the same $1,250 as the original.

You can find links for both printers in the show notes.

Now for a bunch of other projects, a lot of them based in 3D printing this time around.

Pete Prodoehl has a quick writeup on making this simple 3D printed wire bending jig. It uses a few bolts, washers and bearings to actually bend the wire, but the 3D printed mount is really the magic part, allowing you to adjust the amount of curve to get the result you want.

Greg Zumwalt has another great, and thorough writeup on how to print and assemble this complaint button toy.

It reminds me of a kind of antique useless box. The woodpecker element gets the job done, but I think it would be easy to play around with other designs, like a fake hammer or a fist. It looks easy to tweak.

Over on Make, there’s a fun writeup on how to create your own Big Head box written by Yuji Hayashi.

With a cardboard box, some USB powered LED strip, and a Fresnel lens, you can trip people out with a giant version of your face. The trick is really getting the right lens, and they’re fairly expensive and fragile. Still, I’d love to have one of these handy whenever I need to answer the front door.

Penolopy Bulnick has an Instructable up with her experience 3D printing necklace designs on tulle fabric. I’ve seen a number of people write about 3D printing on fabric for cosplay designs, but using it for fashion like this was new to me and I like how it looks. It’s almost like a tattoo.

It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This might be the most hardcore, straight-up tool I’ve ever reviewed. This is a cordless reciprocating saw, also known as a Sawzall. This particular one is a compact, brushless model from DeWalt. I bought it on Amazon for around $132 for the bare tool. I’ve got links to this one, plus blades and batteries, down in the show notes, which help support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

You can think of this as an automatic hacksaw. You put in a blade, either vertically or horizontally, lock it in, and when you squeeze the trigger you get a sawing motion that you can ramp up or down depending on how much you squeeze.

Just like a hacksaw, you can get a range of blades for cutting different materials. Big teeth for wood or landscaping, or smaller, tighter teeth for metal and plastic.

When I had work done on my house last year, I rarely saw the crew without a sawzall like this nearby. They’re awesome for ripping things apart and jamming into tight places. Unlike a circular saw or portable band saw, you can just poke this thing right in to the spot you need.

But as macho as this tool is, I bought it for something pretty silly — breaking down the plastic body of this kid’s ride-on car so that I can fit it on to my new go kart chassis. I’ve tried doing this with a Dremel, a drill, a hacksaw — you name it. This is the most effective tool I’ve found yet.

At high speed, with a small tooth blade, this cuts through the plastic car like butter, without the fumes and fine dust created by other techniques.

That said, this tool falls on the more dangerous side of power tools, in my opinion. There’s no guard on the blade. Nothing to stop it from cutting you if it drops. In some ways it’s like a mini chain saw, so give it your respect and be careful.

That’s a quick look at this cordless reciprocating saw. You can pick one up using the link in the description and you can see thousands of reader recommended tools like these at Cool-Tools.org

I have a few more tools and tips to share. First, check out the work of Walter Hsiao (ShOww) on Thingiverse. This guy has nearly 400 designs, and a lot of them are tools, like sanding blocks, razor handles, and cases.

I also saw that the Instructables team has an outstanding collection of training manuals that go over each of the tools found in their Pier 9 workshop in San Francisco. A few of them are tools few of us will ever see in real life, like a Matsuura 5-Axis CNC Mill. But there are some bread and butter woodshop and metal shop tools in here worth bookmarking.

Eric Strebel has a useful video on how to achieve fantastic surface finishes on painted prototypes. Primer, spot putty, wet sanding, bondo, custom sanding blocks… There’s no easy way out, but if you want to see what it takes to get your finish to the next level, Eric’s video really spells it out.

Last week, Tinkercad introduced a new scribble feature. With it, you can now quickly freehand 2D designs into Tinkercad and have them automatically extrude into 3D forms that you can shape and refine. It’s a cool trick, and a way to get an idea down quickly.

Over on Tindie, this LED Octopus breakout for the Arduino-compatible Teensy board caught my eye. It’s by Essence Engineering, and with it you can drive 8 strips of LEDs from a single board. It’s $34, but it looks like it could really help untangle projects that need a lot of LEDS.

On the Nervous System blog, there’s a fascinating post by Gabe Fields on his experiments with 3D printing patterns onto stretched fabric. By simulating how the fabric would shrink ahead of time, Gabe was able to print designs that control and shape the way the fabric shrinks up. There are some very smart ideas in here that push the whole printed fabric technique forward.

Finally, this Friday at 10am Pacific I’ll be doing a live video chat with Becky Stern talking about creating free, virtual Arduino projects in Tinkercad. It’s always fun talking with Becky, so be sure to tune in.

Maker Faires! This weekend we have Lomé in Togo, Évora, Portugal; Bitola in Republic of Macedonia; West Tisbury, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; North Little Rock, Arkansas; and Buffalo, New York.

And of course the following weekend I’ll be at MAKER FAIRE BAY AREA in San Mateo, California. I’ll be around the whole weekend, mostly at the Power Racing track, but if you want to say hello, drop me an email and we can coordinate something, alright.

Speaking of Power Racing Series. I need a backup racer and another member of my pit crew. Two people. If you’re interested, email me. I’m Donald@makerprojectlab.com. I can get you weekend passes and guarantee you’ll have fun. It’s going to be work, though. And if you’re going to race you need to be on the small side just to fit in the car.

And that does it for this week’s show. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment, or leave a thumbs up. No show next week, but I will send an email out, so sign that email list if you want to stay up on things. Go buy yourself a cordless reciprocating saw if you need to tear some stuff apart. And if you don’t want to do any of that, but you love the show, you can buy me a coffee using the link down here. Alright? Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.